Sunday Sampler [02-03-08]

Acer’s Ferrari 1100 ultra-portable notebook has been reviewed. “The lack of a LED-backlit display along with the totally underwhelming performance when benchmarked was hard to overlook. ‘Course, it wasn’t exactly a slouch, but it certainly didn’t live up to expectations”.

Battlefield Heros – the next installment in the Battlefield franchise has been previewed (did I mention it’s free?) “I have no doubt that when it launches later this year, Battlefield Heroes will be successful. But the same thought keeps running through my mind: Is it still Battlefield?”

The pricing for Intel’s 4-series chipsets have surfaced, and they’ve added a newcomer. “The P43, a cut-down version of the P45 chipset, will not support dual x8 PCI Express slots as the P45 will offer, and will support DDR3 memory only up to 1066MHz compared to DDR3 1333 MHz for the P45.”

Two technical trailers of Far Cry 2 have appeared. “Ubisoft has released two tech movies from Far Cry 2 trailer, showcasing this first person shooter sequel in the works at Ubisoft’s Montreal studio… Far Cry 2 is scheduled to ship in Spring 2008.”

Asus has launched the latest edition to their Xonar sound card range, the DX. “In order to provide an alternative to flat and murky sounding onboard audio, ASUS, leading producer of high quality audio cards, has today released the new ASUS Xonar DX audio card”

Samsung has announced two plasma panels that are “optimized” for 3D rendering, and boast a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. “Samsung says that EA will sell games with 3D glasses for optimal gaming experience. Both models sport full HD (1080p), USB2.0 ports and HDMI 1.3 compliance.”

IBM has announced a new type of technology that sends information via light. “The new technology… could allow, for example, the transmission of 8 trillion bits (terabits) per second of information – equivalent to about 5,000 high-definition video streams”.

Corsair has unveiled their new HX 1000W power supply, which sports two 12V rails that can output a combined 80A. “The HX1000W is the latest addition to Corsair?s award-winning HX-series of modular power supplies for the gaming and enthusiast community”

Finally, Intel’s 4W Diamondville processors will start to appear in the second quarter, not the third. “The first addition to the Diamondville family will [be the] Celeron 230 and Celeron 270… The first dual-core Diamondville processor will be called Celeron 300 and is expected in Q3”